


Make Do and Mend

by juniperwick



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Thor (2011), Unresolved Sexual Tension, slightly more than brotherly affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniperwick/pseuds/juniperwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a battle, Loki experiences the downsides of magical healing; Thor takes care of him, in his own slightly incompetent but very determined way. Fluffy as Loki ever gets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Do and Mend

**Author's Note:**

> Beware! of mentions of blood and throwing up, although not graphic. Can be looked upon as a prequel of sorts to 'Ergi'.

When Loki came to after the battle, it was a long, disorienting moment before he realised where he was. It was dark and unfamiliar, and in that second after opening his eyes the dread certainty crept over him like a cold tide: _I am dead. They killed me._

Flush with the memory of a blade's bright agony, he sat up, gulping a lungful of air like a drowning man – and with the sudden pain that socked him in the gut, everything else returned. The candle burning beside the bed cast just enough light to see, and he knew this room – of course – this was his bedroom, and unless Hel's halls were nothing like he had expected, he wasn't dead at all.

Loki eased back onto the pillows, the pain receding to a heavy ache now that throbbed, in and out, like the sea. To fill the space left over, a swell of nausea mounted, surging up his throat. He groped with an arm and found a pail someone had left beside the bed. Seizing it, he knocked over the candle. It broke in two as it hit the floor and went out, plunging the room into darkness.

Loki heaved into the pail, bringing up sour bile and ironish blood. The pain in his belly flared, digging into his sides with hot fingers. He hugged the pail and breathed through the sickness. At least the nausea told him something, he thought. Residual sickness from thaumic healing; _seið'_ 's hangover working in his body, his blood. He knew it by feel, but had never had it this bad before.

He had never really been hurt, before.

Making a cradle of his hand, Loki conjured in it a sickly green flame. It burned weakly and illuminated little, like corpselight. Loki pushed down the blanket and by the fire's meagre light examined his body.

Across his shallow stomach, scoring a line between his ribs and his navel, was a raised streak of silvery scar tissue. Loki traced unsteady fingers across it. Behind it, deep inside, lived the ache, the body's stubborn memory of trauma, in spite of the magic that mended it. Seeing it, this new addition to his own personal topography, the nausea welled again and he threw up into the pail, crushing out the flame in his hand. When he was done, clammy and panting, he conjured the weak little fire again – even smaller this time, drawing on him in a way he wasn't used to – and saw what he had been too preoccupied to notice before.

Sprawled half on the bed, half crumpled on the floor beside it, face mashed into the mattress in sleep, was Thor. His golden hair looked pale in the witchlight. There were shadows under his closed eyes.

Loki held the ghostly flame for as long as he could, before he let it gutter out and dropped his tired arm. Then, careful of the pain, he extended his leg under the covers and, gently, kicked Thor in the head. “Thor. Wake up.”

In the darkness, he heard Thor splutter awake and sit up. “Wha?” The sound of Thor shaking himself, like a dog. “Uh. Mnn. What? What's happening?” A pause, in which Loki suppressed a snort. Then, uncertainly, “Loki?”

Loki relented. “Light the lamps, Thor.”

“Loki!” In the next moment, Loki found himself underneath his brother. Thor grabbed him, seizing his head and yanking it to him to press a wet kiss upon his forehead. Loki, holding the pail at arm's length, couldn't stifle a cry as the receding ache in his stomach was jerked into life again.

Then Thor was gone and Loki was dropped abruptly to the bed once more. “I'm sorry, brother!” Thor said, somewhere to the side of him. “You still have pain?”

“ _Clearly_.”

“I'm sorry.” There was the noise of Thor climbing from the bed. “I'll light the lamps. But I'm glad you are awake! Where are the tapers? I can't see a thing. Can you not help?”

Loki eased a hand under the covers, down his body. He was still intact, though he felt like one enormous bruise. “No,” he managed, swallowing sickness again. 

With much swearing, blundering about the room and banging into corners – Loki, thinking of his things, wincing – Thor eventually coaxed one lamp into life. It burned with a soft, white flame and a quiet hiss, and cast enough light to see by.

Thor at last fell to his knees beside the bed, grinning as wide as the sky. “You look awful, brother.”

Loki did his best to scowl at him. “I feel awful. What incompetent did you get to spell me back to life? I feel as if I've been put through a mangle.”

The brightness of Thor's face dimmed, though only slightly. “Father himself healed you, Loki.” There was gentle reproach in his tone.

Looking down at the pail in his arms, Loki only said, “Oh.” _Where is he now? And mother? Did they worry?_ The words bubbled behind his lips but he swallowed them down with the waves of nausea. It was only a small struggle to let it go, his wishing their parents here, and he told himself he felt better for it. He had Thor, after all. “You won, I take it?”

“ _We_ won,” Thor said. “Your sorcery was invaluable.”

“Naturally. So much so that my little accident made no difference to the tide of battle.” Loki rubbed his eyes. It was getting harder to keep them open. With an effort, he forced an ironic smile. “Did you worry about me?”

“I knew you would be all right,” Thor said, all earnest eyes and renewed grin. “Father's _seið_ never fails.”

“If you knew,” Loki said, setting the pail down at last, slow as an old man, “why did you fall asleep at my bedside?”

A flicker of guileless incomprehension passed over Thor's face. It was quickly replaced by a smile, warm as sunlight. “Because you're my brother, of course.” He reached up and grasped Loki's arm. “You would do the same for me.”

Thor's hand was warm, almost hot, and a sudden shiver passed over Loki. He hadn't realised how cold he felt. “Yes,” he said, softly, “yes, I would.” He turned his wrist in Thor's grip and touched his fingers, light as a feather, to the soft skin of his brother's inner arm. 

Thor dropped his gaze to Loki's long fingers. Then he frowned, suddenly, so severely that Loki's heart sank in his chest. Thor looked up at him. “You are cold,” he said, voice all accusing. 

“I –” Loki, in a rare moment, faltered. _I am always cold_ , he almost said, before the realisation had even formed in his mind. The truth of this made him, in some deep part of himself, sad. _I am always cold_.

“You should have said,” Thor reproved, and then was on his feet in one quick movement, climbing onto the bed again. 

“What are you doing?” Loki shrunk back as Thor pulled the blankets over himself and edged closer. “It's cruel to play around with injured people.”

“I'm not playing.” Thor grabbed Loki by the shoulders and pulled him back against him. Loki yelped, the pain in his belly twisting, then bit his tongue. “You're cold,” Thor continued. “No false bravery. I want you back on your feet and at my side again. You'll feel better more quickly if you warm up.”

One armed, Thor dragged off his shirt and tossed it aside. Wrapping his arms around Loki's chest – Loki stiff, scarcely breathing – he pressed his naked chest to Loki's back. “Gods,” Thor said, laughing in his throat, and the gravel of it went straight through Loki's body; “you're like ice.”

“Blood loss,” Loki breathed, though he wasn't sure. 

Thor's arms tightened around Loki's ribs. One big hand splayed across his chest, over his fluttering heart. A minute passed, full of familiar silence. Then: “I did worry about you, brother.”

It had been years since they were last like this, Loki thought. Countless years since boyhood. He sighed, letting his heavy eyelids fall closed. “There was no need.”

Tucking his bristly chin on top of Loki's head, Thor went on. “When you fell, with that spear through your guts, the last thing you did was to conjure up a shield so tough it seemed to take an age to break through it.” His voice was quiet and dark. “I could see you, but I couldn't get to you. I watched you – dying.”

“And yet,” Loki murmured, fighting off the creeping exhaustion threatening to take him under, “here I am, alive.” He remembered, dimly. He remembered spitting blood, knees buckling, the explosive imperative _get away from me_. Then he had gone out, like an ember.

Thor rumbled a dissatisfied noise. Loki felt more than heard it. Encircled by Thor's heat, he felt warmer. Gingerly, he allowed his rigid body to relax, such as it could, muscle by muscle. 

“Loki.”

“Mm?”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Yes.” The ache in his belly, where the spear had riven him and his father's magic had knit him together again, still worried at him like a trapped animal. “You've never been wounded, have you?”

“No.” 

“Of course not.” 

If there was an edge of bitterness to Loki's voice, Thor didn't mention it. Instead he slid his hand down Loki's body – Loki tensing again – to press flat and warm against the newly mended flesh. A noise escaped Loki's throat, half pain and half affirmation, before he choked it off. _Weakness_ , he thought, with vitriol.

Thor spread his fingers over the tender area, easing warmth into Loki's skin. He rested his cheek against Loki's dark hair. “Sleep, brother,” he said, breath tickling Loki's ear. “You will feel better when you wake.”

Loki took a tremulous breath, and as he exhaled he let the tension sap out of him, pressing back into Thor's warmth. Sleep was rising to claim him, despite himself. Struggling against it, he opened his eyes. “Thor.”

“Yes?”

Loki wrapped a hand around Thor's wrist. “Be here when I wake.” He tried to put steel into his voice, but was not confident it came across.

He felt Thor smile against his hair. “I will,” he said. “I promise.”

_Good_ , Loki tried to say, but his eyelids had already slipped closed again, and his usually mercurial tongue was thick and slow. Enclosed by his brother's protective heat, he surrendered at last and let himself drift downward, into solving sleep. 

And if in the night he woke from troubled dreams of steel and blood with puissant _seið_ crackling along his fingers, he never found himself alone.


End file.
